Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sorry it's been soooo long :)

Hello friends and family, I hope that you have not given up on us! It is amazing how easy it is to get out of the habit of blogging, even though I really enjoy it... hopefully this will be the beginning of keeping you informed once again.

Lately it does not seem like we have had a lot going on and yet we are in the middle of making some big decisions. We are hoping to buy a home this year, exciting and scary times! We have found the place that we want to live, pretty close to what could be our dream home, in a neighborhood called Josephine Crossing. There are so many exciting things there for us, we would get to build our first home exactly to our wants/needs, the home that we are most interested in right now is the Sun. There are also a lot of misgivings: we know that our money is not our own but the Lord's and truly desire to spend it wisely, we know that our jobs are pretty much secure but Jeff is in an ever changing industry that makes it difficult to commit to something long term in Billings, we are really hoping to raise our children closer to one of our families and this seems like we are growing roots so far away from them... and I am sure that many of you have been in this place before and know so many more of the questions that we face. Looking at 4.85% interest and $8000 tax credit for first time home buyers is another thing to our credit. This whole list is really just us thinking out loud, letting you know some of the thoughts we face as we make this decision. It is also a plea for your prayers, we want to honor God in all we do and desire for doors to be slammed in our face if we go any direction that does not honor Him.

We had a great weekend, our church had a dinner for Valentines with a really neat question and answer session for a panel of couples who have been married and seeking God for quite some time. I am still a Texas girl, I hear of a Valentine dinner and assume that it means we need to dress up for a fancy night out... well, here in Billings that is not the case and Jeff and I showed up way overdressed. Oh well, we like dressing up to go out and had a good time looking nice for each other :) Below is a picture from that night and picture from our walk out on some trails earlier that day.



Sunday, February 1, 2009

The Montana Sweep

Yesterday I got stuck with "The Montana Sweep." Now that I'm a manager I get to do all the flights the nobody else wants to do. The reason that no one wants to do the sweep is because you have to fly six legs many of which are only 15 minutes between block out and shut down. When the weather is bad (which it usually is this time of year) it gets to be quite busy. . . too busy. This time the weather was actually quite nice (except for the 100 Knot headwinds over the Bob (Bob Marshall Wilderness Area)) and I had a camera with me. I decided to take pictures of final approach at all the airports and some of the cool sights along the way.(just what a pilot should be doing at 500 feet and 140 MPH . . . no different than talking on your cell phone and driving I suppose). Here are some of the Pics.

Turning Final in Great Falls. This was one of the very rare instances in which the wind was actually less than 10 knots. I don't ever want to live in Great Falls.



Departing Glacier Park Intl' you can see Glacier National Park up the valley and Lake MacDonald if you look real close. Now that the company has a crew car and an apartment in Kalispell we plan to spend a lot of time up there this summer.



Final approach into Helena. Helena is a really cool little town, it's a mining town that grew up into the state capitol and it has lakes all over the place. I would like to live there but then I would have to spring for a boat.



Butte MT, I hate flying into this place when the weather is down or at night. There are mountains all over the place and an 8000 foot ridge 2 miles from the runway. Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of aluminum in that mountain actually Ameriflight lost an airplane going in there on the sweep!



On runway 30 in Bozeman, I just like the way this one looks. Bozeman is a really pretty place!



I took a little detour past the east slope of the Crazy Mountains, can't wait to do some hiking up there in a few months!



Finally back home in Billings, I enjoy the sweep when the weather is nice.